If you’ve got young kids, the struggle to get them to clean their teeth properly should be familiar. Philips is hoping to help with their recently launched connected electric toothbrush that will hopefully take the sting out of that chore.
The Philips Sonicare for Kids electric toothbrush connects to a tablet or phone using Bluetooth and then a coaching app takes over.
The app is a way to get kids to learn how to brush properly while having a bit of fun, with clear visual instructions included to show kids how to brush properly. A mascot in the app called Sparkly (geddit? Sparkly teeth!), who Philips hope your kid will engage with, who will get happier the longer and better your kid brushes for.
Sparkly looks pretty cute to be honest, and there’s accessories and snacks (healthy ones of course) to unlock which Sparkly can use. Parents can even choose rewards to place on the app themselves.
The app does technical stuff, like logging how long your child brushes for with the aim to reach the dentist-recommended length of two minutes brushing per session.
The brush itself can be customised, with eight interchangeable handle stickers to let them pimp their toothbrush a bit. These will set you back a bit in terms of dollars, as will replacement brushes with 2x replacement heads worth about $30. With that in mind, it’s a good thing that the toothbrush itself only costs $99, with a $30 cashback running at the moment, which gets it down to just $69 from Harvey Norman.
It’s a pretty neat idea, but of course it comes down to how it goes in the real world. We’re going to set this loose on Scott’s kids shortly and see how it goes in a review, so if you’re on the fence you can wait for that.
Does it handle two kids sharing the same brush but with different heads?